The answer is, there is no correct answer. Or perhaps any of them are right, depending on when you happen to tune in. Anyone reading a news story or listening to a state politician speak over the past month could reasonably come away thinking any of the figures is accurate.

California's budget mess has spawned a silly season to rival any political campaign. One day the deficit is pegged at $8 billion, check back a week later and it's climbed to $20 billion. It's enough to exasperate people in Sacramento paid to keep track of such things, never mind the average taxpayer trying to keep score at home.

Even people with credentials as impressive as those of Daniel J.B. Mitchell, who holds a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and teaches public finance for a living, admit to being befuddled.

"I think we have a big problem," said Mitchell, a professor of management and public policy at the University of California-Los Angeles. "But until I see the numbers and can parse out what people are talking about, I don't know exactly what the magnitude of the problem is. Somebody ought to ask what the definition of these numbers is."

What seems clear is that the state's money woes are bad, probably really bad. In the absence of an official estimate - or, at least an official estimate that isn't dated - one can only guess as to the severity of the budget deficit.

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But sources say it will probably be $15 billion or so, on a general fund budget just north of $100 billion.

While that's shy of the doomsday $20 billion shortfall that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger invoked last week, it's still a lot of money.

All of the speculation should come to a halt next week when Schwarzenegger unveils his revised 2008-09 budget - and with it his final, final deficit projection. That will trigger an even more cutthroat guessing game over how he and lawmakers will fix the budget mess.

Good luck keeping track of that.

But, back to the original question: How does a projected deficit go from $8 billion one day, to $10 billion the next, and then $20 billion barely a week later?

State tax revenues are notoriously volatile, but $10 billion or $12 billion isn't exactly pocket change. (Not to get too technical, but that kind of money is enough to cover the entire prisons budget, or pay the salary of more than 150,000 teachers for an entire year.)

The answer lies deep in the recesses of the state Finance Department, or maybe the governor's brain. At the beginning of the year, Schwarzenegger pegged the deficit at $14.5 billion.

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That number suddenly shrunk to about $8 billion after the Legislature voted to borrow several billion dollars and make some other cuts.

The $8 billion number stuck for a while. But as the economy barreled toward recession, the figure began to creep up. State revenue projections grew bleaker by the week. And before you knew it, the governor was citing a $20 billion figure - fully a fifth of the entire budget.

"The governor has not been inconsistent about what he has said," maintained his spokesman, Aaron McLear. "He's been consistent in talking about the scope of the problem."

As for the wildly divergent deficit numbers floating around the Capitol, Perata adds: "If you keep throwing numbers out there, one thing that happens is people just stop listening. And therefore they just don't believe it."

And they probably won't until budget cuts, which are mostly an abstract thought now, become more concrete. Say, when a favorite park closes for lack of funds to run it, or a child's beloved teacher ends up on a layoff list.

At that point, all of the parlor-game guessing about the size of the deficit this spring will seem silly, indeed.